


Rusty Cage

by Margo_Kim



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Consent, F/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joni would do whatever it took to get away from Warren because eventually she wouldn't want to leave. Contains canon dubcon from POV of rapist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rusty Cage

There were times when Joni loved the nightclub. She shouldn’t, she knew that. She danced for her dad’s murderer, and it might not make his dick twitch, but Warren got off on it. But sometimes, the lights would hit the glitter in the air just _so_ and everyone’s hips would sway like a metronome, one-and-two and one-and-two, perfectly in time with the music, perfectly in time with each other. Those times when the crowd was one body, one mind, one movement carried away by the rapture of the night, Joni felt more at home than she felt at home under the shame of her mum's and the stink of her dad’s corpse.

Before Warren, Joni had been nice. She had been smart and pretty and stable. Now she was wild and beautiful and malleable as clay. What did Warren want her to be tonight? She could be that. She was Bette Davis on Mondays, the filthiest slag on Sundays, and everything in between. Whatever the client wanted. Whatever Warren wanted. She remade herself every night.

And Warren approved. He took a special interest in her, bought her dinner sometimes, paired her up with the really important clients with the really fat wallets, gave her advice even when everything in her was screaming at her to run from this man and he knew it. “None of my other girls have what you have, Joni,” he said over drinks one night, said it so fondly she wanted to slap him. She drank instead, and drank, and drank, and danced until the sun came up.

What was it she had, she wondered stumbled home that morning. Desperation? Hatred? An addiction to the thump thump thump of a bass and the way rock music shimmered in the air? Joni didn’t ask Warren. He wanted her to. She could die with her curiosity unsatisfied if it meant pissing him off.

Warren told her anyway one night, pulled her out of dance practice and into his office for a strategy session, as he called them. There was a new white knight in town, arrested Edwards this afternoon like he was some common _thug._ The disgust in Warren’s voice was thick as his cigar smoke. Joni laughed. “Ooh, I’d like to have seen that. Did the copper hit him? Please tell me he hit him.” Warren ignored her, like he always did when she offered an opinion.

The lack of bullshit in their relationship Joni appreciated. They both knew she hated him. They both knew she was in no position to do anything about it. So Warren let her make whatever snide little comments she liked and in exchange Joni sold her mind, body, and soul to ruin whoever Warren wanted ruined. It wasn’t fair, but it was honest and when you make your life plying illusion after illusion, you savor what truth comes your way.

Warren stabbed out his cigar with a practiced elegance. “I need you to work your magic on Mr. Tyler, if Mr. Tyler won’t cooperate.”

“Honey trap?” she asked flatly.

He gave her a grin that would have made her skin crawl once. “So eager, Joni.” It was her turn to ignore him. He laughed at her and said, “No, no. Tonight, I just need you to dance with our hero. We’ll see what tomorrow brings us. Just make sure the lad has a good time, won’t you?”

She could do that easily enough. She nodded and stood, speed the result of a long-held habit of hers to never linger in Warren’s presence. He ruined her plans, grabbed her wrist as she turned to go. Her pulse thudded under his fingers as he stared her up and down. “He’ll love you,” he said with a fatherly affection. “Do you know why? It’s your sadness. There’s no one here quite as sad as you.” He squeezed her wrist for emphasis. “Men like a girl who cries while they shag.”

“With all due respect, sir,” she said, “how the fuck would you know anything about that?”

Warren just smirked and let her arm go, let Joni stomp away, because their relationship was honest and they both knew that Joni could get the last word every time and Warren would still win.

“Do this right,” he shouted after her, “and it’ll be your last job.”

Warren laughed as Joni tripped. Joni did not even slightly care.

Joni was lucky that night. She hated Tyler from the start. It made it easier, him looking like a rat, puffed up on his own self-worth. He judged them, she saw it. He smirked while they danced and sneered at his boss and thought he was so goddamn better than everyone else because he couldn’t see the shackles that were already around his wrists. Joni flashed her big, sad eyes at him while Bowie deafened the room. _Come save me, prince, please, please, please._

The next day, Tyler slammed the money back on Warren’s desk and stormed out. The next day, Joni through a brick through the window of a Woolworth and smoked a fag while she waited for the cops.

It was so easy to lie to him. Tyler wanted nothing more than to believe that the worst had happened to her. Some men prefer to have their egos stroked instead of their cocks. “I’ve no one else to turn to,” she cried. “Please. Please help me.” And just like that, they were stealing away. It was all true, at least. Tyler really was going to save her.

_Do this right, Joni, do this right._

His flat was not a stirring endorsement of moral living. He should have kept the money, bought himself a decent bed, a decent table, a decent anything. He disappeared into the kitchen while Joni hugged herself in the main room and tried not to touch anything.

Tyler cooked for them. That was, it was, the meal, she meant, it was—nice. It was nice. Most men didn’t do that. All men, actually. She’d never eaten a home cooked meal whipped up by anyone but her mum, and this one was all the way from Mexico. Tyler let her taste something from halfway around the globe, and when he refilled her wine glass, he explained how the flavors were supposed to mix and complement each other and, sure, it sounded like a load of rubbish, but it was all so ridiculously posh she had to giggle. Wasn’t a bad giggle.

She slipped the drugs in his wine as he looked away.

When he looked back, she slipped him a lie about rape and the big city and how glamorous it had all been until it wasn’t, and he nodded while she spoke like he was thinking _, yes, of course, obviously that is your story. What else could it be?_ And suddenly, irrationally, she wanted to sweep what she had said away because, _no,_ that was not how it went, and she was better than that lie, and how dare he believe her to be something so trite?

She didn’t say that. Instead she mewed one last, “Help me, Sam,” and sipped her wine.

He was fine while they ate and fine while they cleaned and fine while they pulled out the bed and stretched out the sheets. Joni was beginning to panic that she hadn’t brought enough, that Sam was magically as immune to LSD as he was to reality.

“Sorry about the bed,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s rough on you.”

Joni stretched herself out on the bed as Sam locked the door and flicked off the lights. He intended to sleep on the couch, to get up with her and help her and her imaginary friend escape to a better life. Then he intended to congratulate himself on a job well done, for doing what no other copper had the nerve to do. He’d get high off of his own moral goodness and he’d forget about her.

“Have you got a girlfriend?” Joni asked. Sam said no. The truth was more complicated, Joni knew that. She saw the way the woman in red looked away from Sam as he danced with Joni, the way his eyes had searched for her (But just once. Joni was good at distracting men). The only time you ignore someone so pointedly is when you care more than you want to.

“Do you want to come in with me?” Joni asked.

There was a moment where she had him. He looked at her with the saddest eyes, and suddenly, she understood the appeal, suddenly there was a small, small, small, small, small, small, small part of her that wanted him to say, _yes_. “No.”

Alright. It didn’t matter. There was yes enough in the pause. There was desire enough in his eyes as he tried to let her down easy, like sleeping with him was a favor for her. Please. “I’m not like the others,” he said. Liar.

“It’s a beautiful, wonderful life, Joni. Too beautiful to waste dancing in a rusty cage for a man like that.”

And that life was waiting for her. That life was waiting on the other side of a roll of film and a copper, bent till he broke. “I know,” Joni whispered, and even she was impressed with her acting.

She was giving him a favor, a gift that upstanding men like him dreamed about—a guilt free chance to take what he wanted. How lucky he would feel when he woke, all of the fun and none of the blame.

Joni felt like crying and didn’t know why. “I’m sorry for all the trouble.” Now she was the liar. She knew why.

“Go to sleep,” he said so she put her head down on the pillow and watched him through the slits of her eyes as he began to shake, began to sweat.

“Sam,” she whispered. Then, “Sam. Sam. Sam.”

He said nothing, only tossed fitfully and buried his face in his pillow. It was time, then.

She stripped him while he pawed at her with clumsy hands. Whether he was trying to stop her or embrace her, she couldn’t tell, but it was far too much movement so she stilled him with a kiss. It kept him quiet as she unbuttoned his trousers. The zip snagged, but she forced it down and hoped she didn’t hurt anything in the process. Sam whimpered as she drew back to pull them off. His irises were gone, or so it seemed in the dark anyway, and he stared up at her with black eyes, shivering as the air from the cracked window chilled his sweat-soaked body. All he wore now were his pants and it scared her, scared her more than it should, so she cupped him through the soft white fabric just to hear him sigh. “Come on, Sam,” she whispered through dry lips. “It’s time to go to bed.”

It was hard to force a grown man—a fit man, she couldn’t help but notice—where he didn’t want to go, so she cajoled and pleaded and kissed him into submission as he stumbled those few feet to collapse on that excuse for a bed. She straddled him before he could twist himself off and showered him in kisses, light as raindrops. “Good job, Sam, good job,” she muttered into his hot neck as she fumbled with the handcuffs, and when he flinched away from them, she kissed his wrists where skin met metal.

Sam secured, Joni scrambled off of him to set up the camera, the one she’d smuggled here in the bottom of her massive bag. “It’s a hobby,” she had planned to say if Sam asked. She had built a whole story where she was fond of photography, had learned it from her mother when she was very little, and had always wanted to make her living doing it, but she doubted that she had the skill and she had missed her chance to learn. And Sam would have said that of course she could do photography if she liked, that it was never too late to start building the life you want. He’d tell her he had faith in her. He’d ask her to send him some of the pictures she would take when she escaped to Liverpool. He’d say he would love to see them.

But he didn’t see the camera so he didn’t ask so Joni didn’t lie and he didn’t say any of those things that Joni thought she would hear, and it didn’t matter even one bit.

She couldn’t look at Sam’s face while she rode him. Joni kept her eyes fixed on the wall opposite her, where the wallpaper was starting to peel away and she could see the yellowed wall underneath. She kept her eyes on that while Sam groaned and moaned and whimpered and shook underneath her. He mumbled things she refused to listen to. Joni knew better than that.  
But she looked down once, just once, because she couldn’t stand not knowing what his face looked like as he lost himself. Sam stared back without seeing her. “Annie,” he said.  
Joni almost cupped his cheek. She put her hand on his chest instead, braced herself as she ground her hips against his. “Yes, that’s me. I’m Annie, that’s me. I’m her.”

He strained against his handcuffs. He didn’t want to escape. He wanted to touch her. She wanted him to touch her. “I’m Annie. Love, it’s me, I’m Annie, I’m here.”

Words were beyond him, but he tried. He could barely keep his eyes open, but he tried, stared up at her face like she was a lifeline, like she would tow him home. “Annie,” he said finally.

“Please, Annie.”

“Tell me you love me,” Joni panted. “Come on, Sam, it’s Annie. Tell me you love me.”  
Sam shook his head, or rather, lolled his head back and forth. “I don’t,” he slurred, and Joni wanted to slap him, wanted to beat him until he choked on his own blood, the cruel bastard. She moved to do it, but her traitorous hand cupped his cheek instead and forced him to look at her. “Tell me you love me,” she whispered and she hadn’t even realized that she was crying until her tear hit Sam’s cheek. He stared blankly up at her, and he never once saw her face. “Sam. Please, Sam, please.” He didn’t flinch as the tears hit him. “Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He shuddered up against her, and she rocked him through his climax as he twitched and twisted underneath her.

She lay across him, covered him with her body as he relaxed underneath him. “It’s Annie, Sam,” she whispered into his ear. “Please love me.”

“I could,” he murmured. It was the last sensible thing she got out of him.

Joni rolled off of him and walked to the bathroom with shaky legs. She wadded up half a roll of toilet paper and scrubbed herself clean before she flushed the evidence away. She washed her face without looking in the mirror. Now that she was one, she found she didn’t want to see what a free woman looked like.

When she was clean, she found Sam asleep, his face more serene than she had ever seen it. He slept while she packed and dressed and waited by the window for the strength to walk home. There were still some dishes in the sink so Joni washed them and put them back in the cabinet. She closed the window. She folded his clothes. Then she stood there, standing over him as he dreamed, for five minutes, ten minutes, twenty.

When she left, she did not look back.


End file.
